Yuki Tsunoda was left annoyed on the finish of the Mexico Metropolis Grand Prix after coming residence eleventh on a day the place he felt factors had been greater than attainable within the RB21. The Japanese racer had been operating within the prime 10 within the first stint and was battling with the likes of Oscar Piastri, earlier than his afternoon unravelled within the pits.
Tsunoda doesn’t have a confirmed drive for subsequent season, and is underneath stress to carry out at Red Bull, however he has not too long ago proven an uptick in type scoring in each Baku and Austin and displaying encouraging indicators of progress over one lap too.
Beginning tenth in Mexico Metropolis, Tsunoda had a strong getaway and was operating eighth forward of Piastri. Though he did finally lose out in his combat with the McLaren man – which was partly because of being on the unfavoured medium tyres – Tsunoda held him up lengthy sufficient to disrupt Piastri’s race, which can or is probably not essential with regards to deciding the Championship.
However whereas Tsunoda was on the identical technique as his crew mate, it didn’t play out as effectively for the Japanese racer, who pitted later than his rivals and got here out in visitors. As such, he was not in a position to utilise the additional tempo in his tender compound tyres.
And he was additional hampered by a sluggish pit cease besides. Ultimately he got here residence eleventh, a couple of seconds away from Gabriel Bortoleto within the remaining factors paying place.
“Right this moment was straightforward factors, we simply threw it away,” stated Tsunoda after the race. “It’s what it’s, it’s nonetheless racing. The constructive is the tempo was fairly okay, so one thing to take.
“Simply hold progressing and continue to learn, and that’s what I’m doing. However this type of scenario, lacking out on factors that had been straightforward, and we may take in the present day, P8, P7, I don’t know. Irritating.”
Crew boss Laurent Mekies was eager to reward Tsunoda, saying that his tempo was not far off that of Verstappen for a lot of the weekend, in a show he known as “his finest weekend in a very long time.”
“It was very, very shut in quali to Max,” Mekies defined. “I believe it was two tenths in Q2. Right this moment, the primary stint was very, very sturdy as effectively, two tenths, three tenths to Max on the identical very lengthy first stint on the medium.
“Then after, honest sufficient, I believe it is on our aspect, we left him out a bit longer as a result of there was a bonus for us to try this and we had a barely lengthy pit cease, so we killed a couple of factors that he would have scored on benefit.”
Tsunoda has scored in three of the six Grands Prix because the summer season break, having scored in simply three of the earlier 12 races excluding Sprints.
Nonetheless, with Arvid Lindblad impressing in his FP1 session with the crew in Mexico, the stress stays firmly on Tsunoda’s shoulders as he seeks a solution to proceed his Purple Bull F1 profession.
